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It’s 1893. Road locomotives, such as the newfangled motorcar, cannot be practically driven on the queen’s highway (they’re not street legal for another three years). The fastest thing on the roads is still the bicycle. But a dip in bicycling’s popularity and a recession (some bicycle firms went pop in 1893) have seen more second-hand machines coming on the market. Some of the new riders have less manners than the gentleman riders of the 1880s, and ‘scorchers’ were frightening the beejezus out of pedestrians. It was still three years away from the peak of bicycling’s popularity – when high society took to the wheel, from royalty to aristocracy to the middle classes – and, in the comic song Blazy Bill, satirical magazine Punch took a real dig at the ‘Cycling Cad’.

To be sung to the tune of ‘Daisy Bell, a Bicycle made for Two’, a music hall favourite, written by Harry Dacre in 1892, Blazy Bill was written from the pedestrian’s perspective.

POPULAR SONGS RE-SUNG. “BLAZY BILL; OR, THE BICYCLE CAD.”

“The churl in nature up and down” is perennial and ubiquitous. Like the god Vishnu, he has many avatars. Every new development of popular pastime (for instance) developes its own particular species of “Cad.” Leech’s “Galloping Snob” of a quarter of a century ago has been succeeded by that Jehu of the “Bike,” the Cycling Cad, to whose endearing manners and customs in the Queen’s highway, and elsewhere, the long-suffering pedestrian is persuaded a laggard Law will shortly have to find its attention urgently directed. Mr. Punch, who is of the same opinion, adapts Mr. Harry Dacre’s popular song to what he is convinced will be a popular purpose.

Perturbed Pedestrian sings:—

There is a fear within my heart,
BLAZY! BLAZY!
Planted one day with a demon dart.
Planted by Blazy Bill.
Whether he’ll kill me, or kill me not,
Smash me or only spill, [not
Little I know, but I’d give a lot
To be rescued from Blazy Bill.

Chorus—
BLAZY! BLAZY!
Give me a chance, Sir, do!
I’m half crazy,
All for the fear of you.
You haven’t a stylish way, Sir,
I can’t admire that “blazer”
(Which you think sweet).
The curse of the street
Is the Bicycle Cad—like you!

Chorus—
BLAZY! BLAZY!
Bother your “biking” crew!
I’m half crazy,
All for sheer dread of you.
I can’t afford a carriage,
If I walk — in Brixton or Harwich —
The curse of the street,
I am sure to meet
In a Bicycle Cad like you!

Why should we stand this wheel-bred woe?
BLAZY! BLAZY!
Yes, your vile bell you will ring, I know,Suddenly, BLAZY BILL,
When you’re close on my heels, and a trip I make,
And, unless I skedaddle with skill,
I’m over before you have put on the brake,
Half-fuddled BLAZY BILL!

Chorus—
BLAZY! BLAZY!
Turn up wild wheeling, do!
I’m half crazy,
All in blue funk of you.
The Galloping Snob was a curse, Sir,
But the Walloping Wheelman’s a worser.
I’d subscribe my quid
To be thoroughly rid
Of all Bicycle Cads like you!

"How cyclists were the first to push for good roads & became the pioneers of motoring." ROADS WERE NOT BUILT FOR CARS is a print, Kindle, iPad and free e-book about roads history.
The coming of the railways in the 1830s killed off the stage-coach trade; almost all rural roads reverted to low-level local use. Cyclists were the first group in a generation to use roads and were the first to push for high-quality sealed surfaces and were the first to lobby for national funding and leadership for roads. They were also the first promoters of motoring; the first motoring journalists had first been cycling journalists; and there was a transfer of technology from cycling to motoring without which cars as we know them wouldn't exist! Nearly seventy car marques – including Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC – had bicycling beginnings.
'Roads Were Not Built for Cars' is a history book, focussing on a time when cyclists had political clout, in Britain and especially in America. The book researches the Roads Improvement Association - a lobbying group created by the Cyclists' Touring Club in 1886 - and the Good Roads movement organised by the League of American Wheelmen in the same period.

The book was published in a Kickstarter limited-edition in September 2014. Island Press of Washington, D.C. published a revised second-edition in April 2015.
Thanks to research grants and advertising support, text-only PDF chapters from the book are slowly being made available for free to read online. The free distribution model is being used in order to get the book seen by as many eyes as possible. The paid-for publications are richly illustrated; the free versions have had the pix stripped out and replaced with adverts.
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